'Are you going into the house,' said Dockwrath, 'to see her again?' and he indicated with his head the side on which his wife was, as she before had indicated his side.
'Well, yes; I think I'll say good-bye.'
'Don't be talking to her about this affair. She understands nothing about it, and everything goes up to that woman at Orley Farm.' And so they parted.
'And he wanted you to go to the Blue Posts, did he?' said Miriam when she heard of the proposition. 'It's like him. If there is to be any money spent it's anywhere but at home.'
'But I aint going,' said John.
'He'll go before the day's out, though he mayn't get his dinner there. And he'll be ever so free when he's there. He'll stand brandy and water to half Hamworth when he thinks he can get anything by it; but if you'll believe me, John, though I've all the fag of the house on me, and all them children, I can't get a pint of beer—not regular—betwixt breakfast and bedtime.' Poor Miriam! Why had she not taken advice when she was younger? John Kenneby would have given her what beer was good for her, quite regularly.
Then he went out and took his walk, sauntering away to the gate of Orley Farm, and looking up the avenue. He ventured up some way, and there at a distance before him he saw Lucius Mason walking up and down, from the house towards the road and back again, swinging a heavy stick in his hand, with his hat pressed down over his brows. Kenneby had no desire to speak to him; so he returned to the gate, and thence went back to the station, escaping the town by a side lane; and in this way he got back to London without holding further communication with the people of Hamworth.
CHAPTER III.
JOHN KENNEBY'S COURTSHIP.
'She's as sweet a temper, John, as ever stirred a lump of sugar in her tea,' said Mrs. Moulder to her brother, as they sat together over the fire in Great St. Helen's on that same evening,—after his return from Hamworth. 'That she is,—and so Smiley always found her. "She's always the same," Smiley said to me many a day. And what can a man want more than that?'
'That's quite true,' said John.
'And then as to her habits—I never knew her take a drop too much since first I set eyes on her, and that's nigh twenty years ago.
